Leon, Nicaragua

Hola amigos! I´m in the city of Leon, Nicaragua...staying here at this hostel http://www.bigfootadventure.com/index.html I´ve signed up for the volcano boarding tour this afternoon. We hike up to the top of a dormant (here´s hoping) volcano and board down!

Yesterday with some new friends we took a chicken bus to a really cool beach. Played in the BIG surf. Was awesome. A helicoper buzzed the beach and landed. Not sure what they were doing, but it was a site to see. Man, now that I´m in a lower elevation, it´s H.O.T. hot. I´m keeping the sunscreen on, that´s for sure.

Oh boy, let me tell you about the journey and boarder crossing from Honduras. I left Honduras with a couple of people, the Canadian guy I wrote about the other day and a new girl from Spain. She´s traveling alone for a year. Her boyfriend is joing her for Christmas and she´s invited me to hang with them. I´m not sure what I´ll do. I don´t want to intrude and anyway they´ll be in Costa Rica. I´m pretty sure I´m skipping Costa Rica. She´s been our translator and it´s awesome. There was a Honduran cross-dresser who sat across from me on the bus. He had a dainty purse and shoes (well as dainty as a guy wearing womens´ shoes gets) delicate jewlery and his hair was in a purdy clip. Hey man...whatever floats yer boat. I´ll salute your freak flag! The poor bastard was puking the whole ride. As a fellow puker, my heart went out to him. I gave him my water and a baby wipe to clean his tear stained face. Poor thing....

So, the bus is approaching the boarder now.. It´s a dusty, shitty area. We stop and before we know it we are swarmed and I mean SWARMED by locals at least 15 -20 guys. They are trying to get us to ride in their pettycabs the 100 feet to the immigration window. Before we even got off the bus they were on the roof getting our backpacks...not to steal them, but to put them on their own pettycabs to ensure we go with them. It was awful!! I got into a tug of war for my bag. They started to try to grab us to stear us to their pettycabs. Don´t touch me, amigos! Hands off! Then they start fighting amoungst themselves. The three of us were HORRIFIED, the poor Spanish girl wouldn´t let me go. All I can say, is THANK GOD I was with other people. I can´t imagine navigating that clusterfuck alone. Money changers got into the mix too and stalked us as well. The saddest part is that all they´re trying to do is feed their families. I´m told that the other boarder crossing aren´t like that, thank God. After we caught our breath we then had to take a pettycab the mile or so after over a bridge into Nicaragua. That pettycab driver, when mi Spanish amiga asked what his rate was, told us, just a tip. So when we get to our distination we tipped him, $2.00 US. Well that wasn´t enough for him, so he refused it. He hung outside the bus trying to shame us into more money. Chump. Dude, you shoulda set your price up front, we we asked you, not once, but twice. When the bus started up, he changed his tune and accepted our money.

With Christmas coming the city is gearing up. Lots of holiday decorations going up. I´m not sure if it´s part of Christmas, or if it´s everyday, but the locals parade around a life sized giant amazon sized doll. It´s creepy. We were walking around and looking at the cathedrial the other night, a Mass was going on and some guys were just outside the door lighting off bottlerockets. No one batted an eye.

I´m starting to price flights to South America, I´ll probably head down early to mid January. So if anyone is coming down.... speak now, or forever hold your peace.

I´m heading to Grenada tomorrow and will be in touch soon. Miss you all!